A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

by Henry Charles Lea

The negativo—the man who denied his heresy in the face of what was deemed competent testimony of guilt—was classed as an impenitent heretic and doomed to relaxation. This was the inevitable logic of the Inquisition, although it led to the most tragic of all situations—that of being tortured to death in honor of the faith which the sufferer held. It was impossible, under the inquisitorial system, to allow a possible heretic to escape merely because he unflinchingly affirmed his orthodoxy, and yet when a man asserted it up to the brasero, knowing that it would not avail him, it was impossible not to recognize in him a true believer who would not save his body at the expense of falsely confessing apostasy. Three such there were in the Granada auto of May 27, 1593, burnt as negativos and consequently burnt alive.[581] Such men were true martyrs, especially as rigid constructionists denied them the consolations of religion in their last moments. At the Toledo auto of October 28, 1723, Diego de Quiros was in this position, and a Jesuit who heard him in sacramental confession was severely censured for doing so while he persisted in maintaining his innocence. Again the question came up in the Toledo auto of July 1, 1725. Fernando de Castro was relaxed as an impenitent negativo and was sentenced to burning alive. On account of the heat the execution was postponed until the afternoon, and the convict was meanwhile placed in the public prison. With cries he earnestly begged for sacramental confession, but the frailes in attendance declined unless he should admit his heresy, which he steadfastly refused to do, asserting the witnesses to be perjured, and the judgement unjust. At this juncture there came a Jesuit father who yielded to the despairing appeals of the poor wretch and heard him in confession, whereupon the judge took the responsibility of modifying the sentence to preliminary strangulation. The frailes loudly rebuked the Jesuit, and were joined by the public, disappointed of the promised spectacle of the burning alive of a fellow-creature. Considerable debate followed and a priest named Candido Múñoz wrote an argument justifying the Jesuit, but his labor was superfluous for, while his tract was in the press, the Suprema issued a carta acordada, October 11th, ordering that in such cases the priest should hear the confession and confer absolution or not, according to the disposition manifested, but in future no one but the appointed theologians were to attend the convict to the last.[582]

Thus it was left to this late date to admit the dying victim to the sacraments, probably, we may assume, on the doctrine that the blood of martyrdom is the most efficacious of all sacraments. Such cases could not have been common, but those must have been numerous in which the unjustly convicted negativo found his resolution give way at the approach to the brasero and, in order to escape burning alive and to obtain the sacraments, falsely confessed to having entertained heresies which his soul abhorred.

There was also the diminuto, who made a confession that did not “satisfy the evidence” and thus was held to be imperfect. A confession that was not full was regarded as fictitious; it inferred impenitence and therefore entailed relaxation. We have seen how, under the early Edicts of Grace, any omissions in the hurried confessions was construed as rendering them imperfect and subjecting the penitent to prosecution and relaxation. Especially was imperfect denunciation of accomplices regarded as diminucio; if the accused confessed all that was in evidence against himself and omitted the acts of accomplices who were proved to have been with him, or if he named only those who were absent or dead or already convicted, it was proof of malice and impenitence; he was not truly converted and was subject to relaxation after torture in caput alienum.[583] The denial of heretical intention in acts confessed, which was frequent in those against whom Judaic or Moorish customs were proved, constituted the accused a negativo in the substantial part of heresy, which is intention, or a diminuto, implying, according to the common opinion, impenitence and pertinacity involving relaxation.[584] Thus Hernando de Palma, a Morisco, accused of teaching and conducting Moorish ceremonies, denied and overcame severe torture, whereupon the consulta de fe voted for appearance in an auto and abjuration de levi. Ignorant of this, he asked for an audience and confessed that, for seven or eight years, he had practised some Moorish rites, without regarding them as contrary to the faith. In this he persisted and was burnt in the Toledo auto of 1606. Revocation of confession was similarly impenitence and pertinacity, as in the case of Manuel Thomas, who confessed to Judaism after the accusation was presented, then revoked the confession and persisted in the revocation, for which he was relaxed in the Toledo auto of 1585.[585]

When the Reformation plunged the Church into a struggle for life, of which no man might foretell the result, there arose a demand for sharper measures of repression. The dogmatizer or heresiarch—he who not only condemned his own soul to perdition but sought to carry others along with him, by disseminating his pestiferous doctrines—might recant and make his peace with God, but not with God’s earthly ministers. Simancas well expresses the hatred intensified by fear, which was aroused by the teachers of the new doctrines. The heresiarch, he says, the master of errors, is to be relaxed and, under no circumstances, is to be received back into the Church. He is unworthy of pardon who has led others into error, like a murderer who has slain many. He is a crafty homicide, who daily sheds the blood of souls. He who teaches heresy slays, not with the sword, but with the poison of his doctrine; he kills not the body but the soul, not with temporary but with eternal death, wherefore he is worthy of the severest punishment. And, of all others, the teachers of the Lutheran heresies are in no way to be pardoned.[586]

HERESIARCHS

Yet the Church had always professed to welcome to reconciliation its erring children, who renounced their errors and begged for mercy, provided they were not relapsed, and the Inquisition from its inception had acted on this principle. On this were based the powers deputized to it and when, in 1558 the discovery of the Protestants of Valladolid was so exploited as to throw Spain into agitation, and it was desired to make an example of Doctor Agustin Cazalla, some further grant of faculties was felt to be necessary. Paul IV was nothing loath. In 1555 he had apparently desired to show that Rome was not to be outdone by Geneva in persecuting rigor and that, if Calvin in 1553 had burnt Servet for denying the Trinity, he could be equally zealous for the faith. By the bull Cum quorundam he decreed that all who denied the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, his conception through the Holy Ghost, his death for human salvation, or the perpetual virginity of the Virgin, and who did not confess to inquisitors and abjure their errors within three months, and all who in future should maintain those heresies, should be treated as though they were relapsed and as such should be forthwith relaxed to the secular arm.[587] Having thus extended the catalogue of unpardonable heresies, he was quite ready to grant the additional powers sought by the Spanish Inquisition. By a brief of January 4, 1559, he bestowed on the inquisitor-general and Suprema a faculty to relax all heresiarchs and other heretics, even though they were not relapsed, and though they desired to abjure their heresies, when it was believed with verisimilitude that the abjuration was not sincere but was only to escape punishment.[588] This was, in fact, no more than the power assumed in the Instructions of 1484, but under it, as we shall see hereafter, were relaxed some conspicuous heretics, such as Doctor Cazalla at Valladolid and Juan Ponce de Leon at Seville, although they had renounced their errors and sought reconciliation in advance of the autos de fe.

It thus became a principle in inquisitorial jurisprudence that the inquisitor-general and Suprema could relax dogmatizers, irrespective of pertinacity or relapse.[589] This was not confined to Protestants. About 1600, the Suprema had to decide the case of a Morisco alfaquí, accused of being a teacher of Islam, who confessed to teaching his wife but denied other proselytism. A consulta presented to the Suprema argued that, although by law a dogmatizer must be relaxed yet, if he spontaneously denounces himself and is sincerely repentant, he can be reconciled, for his conversion and humility serve as an example to those whom he has misled. In the present case, however, the alfaquí has only confessed partially and to save himself, wherefore he should be relaxed—and to this the Suprema assented.[590] Yet this severity had exceptions. In the Seville auto of July 5, 1722, Pedro de Alpuin, reconciled with perpetual prison and sanbenito, had five years of galleys added for being a teacher of the Law of Moses, and even these were remitted in consideration of his infirmities.[591]

Relapse was the most fruitful source of relaxation, at least after the first rage of the Inquisition had exhausted itself. It has been already stated that, after reconciliation or abjuration de vehementi, any backsliding was held to indicate that the conversion had been fictitious, that the culprit was impenitent and pertinacious, and that he was to be abandoned to the secular arm without hope of mercy. This was an unvarying principle of the canon law. The Suprema, in a case brought before it, in 1536, declared that it could not dispense for that which the law enjoined, and therefore it was powerless to relieve the relapsed from his punishment.[592] Simancas is equally emphatic—the relapsed is to be condemned without hope of pardon.[593] In the first audience of the accused, the inquisitor was required to tell him that, if he would discharge his conscience, his case would be despatched with speed and mercy but, if the charge was relapse, the word mercy was to be omitted because no mercy could be shown.[594] Even prompt and full confession was of no avail; the law was absolute and implacable.[595]

RELAPSE

This severity was greatly enhanced by the elastic definition given to relapse. The reconciled penitent had to walk warily, for any unconscious return to ancestral habits was sufficient to convict him. About 1500 the Suprema decreed that penitents communicating with unreconciled heretics were to be held as relapsed, and all evidence coming before the tribunals was to be scrutinized for proof that would justify prosecution—evidently of those who might chance to be incidentally named in it—and then, if this proved insufficient for conviction, any admission of the accused, not contained in his former confession, could be used to condemn him as a fictitious convert.[596] How this was construed in practice, we learn from Simancas, who says that he is considered a relapsed who, after abjuring heresy, talks with heretics, or visits them, or makes presents to them, or favors and communicates with them, so that he cannot but be held to do it as a consequence of his heresy.[597] The man who had been reconciled thus lived in unceasing danger that, at any moment, some acquaintance might be tried and convicted and his name might occur in the evidence as being on good terms with him. Safety, indeed, could only be secured by resolutely isolating himself from his family and his race.